A Turn of Tables
by The Deej
Summary: Klaus and Caroline have been together for a little while now with the past behind them and the future's looking bright. They're on their way to Europe when an unsightly scene sends Caroline in a talespin.


"Pet, just come down here and talk to me. I don't want to have to…"

"What Klaus?" Caroline poked her head out of her bedroom window to look at the pathetic hybrid standing in her yard. "What are you going to do, hmm? Kill some of my dearest friends? Make another army of hybrids? Traipse around in my boyfriend's body? Throw another _Ball_?"

God, he loved it when she got like this, all fiery and intense with no fear of him. It was one of her best qualities and it made him feel like they weren't as different as she'd like to think. "I was going to say I don't want to have to beg, but I could throw you another ball if you'd like." He couldn't help but goad her even further because it was just too easy to get under her skin.

Caroline ignored his attempt at being witty and continued to whip around her room with all the vampire speed she could muster, unpacking the very same suitcase she'd spent hours packing early that day. She was so careful and deliberate with her choices and didn't want to forget a single thing now that she was finally going on their long awaited adventure together. Well he screwed that up, didn't he?

"Love, please stop unpacking, this was all just a misunderstanding," he said while trying to hold back a smile.

"Oh don't even try it!" Caroline said. "The misunderstanding was thinking _you_ could actually be a decent man with morals and compassion."

Well, we haven't been around this mountain a thousand times already, he thought with indignation. How many times does he have to prove to her that he's changed? "Now wait a second, _Caroline_!"

There it was. She knew she got to him. In all their time together of flirting and bantering and everything in between, he rarely called her Caroline. It was always 'Pet' or 'Love' or 'Sweetheart', it was never just plain old 'Caroline', unless he meant business. Well it's about time he caught up with her disappointment of the evening. She was back at the window again, looking down at him with her arms folded and an annoyed expression on her face, an expression she had perfected over the years with her mother, her schoolmates, and now with Klaus. "Please Klaus, try and justify what happened tonight, I would love to hear why you were alone with her in a dark alley, fang deep in her throat."

_Bullocks!_ He thought. He just wanted her to settle down for a second so he could explain himself, but now he realized he had no rational explanation as to what she saw, except of course for the real reason.

She noticed his hesitation and with that said, "That's what I thought", and went back to unpacking.

Why did he have to do that, when everything was going so well between them? After all the years of him chasing her and wooing her with everything from flowers to jewels and just plain persistence, and the moment she finally gave into her desires and allowed him in to her life, this is how he treats her? Ugh! The thought of it made her sick. And with _her_! The one person she'd been competing with since the day of their debutant ball. The one person she has always felt second best to until he came along. He wanted _her_. Made _her_ feel like the most important person in the world and for what, so he could go behind her back and become blood donors with Elena!

"Elena!" she screamed. She didn't mean to say it out loud, but it had reached a boiling point in her mind. "Of all the girls, vampire or otherwise, in all of Mystic Falls, you _had_ to play 'Blood Buddies' with her!"

"Caroline, please, it's not what you think, I promise."

"Then what, Klaus, what did I see?" She threw her hands out in exasperation. "Cause from where I was standing it looked exactly like what I'm thinking."

At that moment Caroline's phone chimed with a new message. It was Elena. _Oh good grief, what the hell does she want?_ Caroline thought.

**ELENA: Care, please, it's not what you think. **

**CAROLINE: You sound just like Klaus! Then tell me what I should think!**

Caroline threw her phone down on her bed trying to convince herself that she didn't care what her best friend of 25 years could possibly have to say for herself. But she couldn't push aside the secret hope that there truly was a rational explanation for what she saw. Caroline's phone chimed again.

**ELENA: I know it looked horrible, but please give Klaus the opportunity to explain. **

**CAROLINE: I should really tell Damon about this.**

**ELENA: He already knows about it. **

Elena's last message made no sense. Damon's okay with Elena bouncing between him and Klaus? She knew Damon had a few screws loose but he loved Elena and he would never want her to be with someone else, he had to share her with Stefan for far too long as it was.

"Sweetheart, please let me come up there." Klaus' voice broke her train of thought. "I could force myself into your bedroom, but I'd like for you to make that decision for the both of us."

Caroline came to the window one more time to face the man that she had grown to love so dearly. She was hurt and confused and wanted nothing more than for him to comfort her and take away all the insecurities that were rising up. No matter how angry she was at him, it was the look he had on his face right then, the same look he's been giving her since the day he came to her room and saved her on her birthday all those years ago, that allowed him back in. "Fine," she said, "come up here before I change my mind."

Before she could blink, Klaus came through the window and was standing mere inches from her face. He could tell that he was wrestling with something internally as he stared at her with intensity. "Well you're here…explain," she scoffed.

Klaus took a deep breath, inhaling her familiar scent and lifted his hand to caress the side of her face. As his hand drew closer, Caroline stepped back quickly to deter her lover from the satisfaction of her touch. He withdrew his hand, took another deep breath and launched forward into his explanation of the scene she stumbled upon only hours ago. "Remember the night Tyler and I changed back into our own bodies?"

How could she forget? After all that he had done to them and the lives he changed and ruined, she could still remember the relief she felt when they were finally in their true form. Although it wasn't a long excursion that he had in Tyler's body, it was long enough for her to finally confess her true feelings for the seemingly dead Klaus. She was tired of pretending that Klaus' dying had made her feel whole or complete, and had confessed to him, thinking it was Tyler, that his death had actually placed a hole in her heart.

Her confession of feelings was enough for him to reveal his true self. She still remembers the sway of emotions that overwhelmed her the following weeks, trying to wrap her mind around whom she'd really been spending all that time with, to where Tyler was now if Klaus had taken residence up in his, and why she wasn't as angry as she thought she should've been. She knew she was beginning to care for Klaus before his implied death, she knew she hated him too for the deception, but most of all she felt relief that he wasn't truly gone.

It would take her years to move past the event. Years of trying to make things work with Tyler, and finally knowing that they never would after everything they'd been through. Not to mention Klaus' continued pursuit of her. He became relentless since she had confessed to him how she really felt, and was fueled with a new force to win her heart. And reluctantly, after many years, he did. He eventually won the trust and companionship of her friends too, all of them realizing that if they were going to live forever, it's better to be a team than spend the next hundred or thousand years at each other's throats. The memories softened her expression as she looked up in to Klaus' eyes. "What happened the night you changed back?"

Klaus took another deep breath and began his story, "The spell that Bonnie cast the night Alaric killed me, had some conditions." He sighed, realizing this was going to be tougher to explain than he thought.

"What kind of conditions?" Caroline asked.

"The kind of conditions that I never quite understood until I returned to my body," Klaus paused. "My whole life I've been the hunter, never the prey. I fed upon the weak, I waited decades for the new doppelgangers to emerge so I could make my attack and unbury the dormant wolf inside. I never thought about anything but seeking revenge and causing chaos."

"Well that's an understatement," Caroline chimed in.

"Are you going to let me finish, Love, without adding a snarky response after every turn of the page?" He wasn't in the mood for her "fiery" personality at the moment.

Caroline glared at him, not thinking he had any right in that moment to ask anything from her, but she nodded her head to allow him to continue.

"Thank you," he said with sincerity. "There was a part of Bonnie's spell that I overlooked when I agreed to it. At the time, I had no other option or you all would be dead right along with me." Klaus stepped to the side and sat on her bed, patting the spot next to him for Caroline to follow in suit. She reluctantly followed, making sure to keep her distance as she did so.

"The spell was simple enough; Tyler goes dormant and I take over his body until Bonnie could figure out a way to return me. However, there was a catch. Once the transformation was complete I had to accept a sort of 'chink' in my armor, if you will. I would no longer walk the earth with complete power or control of my destiny." He looked at Caroline's face, her eyebrows knitted together in confusion, but he continued, "When I returned to my body I was full of excitement and ready to take on the new challenges that lie ahead of me, you being one of them," he smiled her direction and she couldn't help but smirk at him while she rolled her eyes.

Bringing the conversation back on course she asked, "So what did the 'chink' entail?" She was fully engulfed in this new revelation of a night that happened so many years ago.

"Well, that's where Elena comes into play. It's a good thing she became a vampire that same night, or I would've had to do it for her." He looked at Caroline, waiting for this new thought to come to her.

"You mean you would've had to make her a vampire once you returned to your body?" She was shocked at what she was hearing and almost relieved that Elena managed to do that on her own, with a little help from Rebekah, of course.

"Yes, but to my delight, she had already made the transformation without my help. I was, of course, pained to see my dreams of a hybrid army fall to the wayside," he said this with a sad smile while he reminisced about a time that seemed so trivial now after finding Caroline.

"Okay, so that's definitely news to me, but you still need to get to the point of you sucking down my friend's blood in the alley," he wasn't getting off the hook with his gentle eyes and longing stares that she knew were only for her.

"I thought that was it; that I was off the hook from any 'conditions' the spell may have had. Destroy the one thing that I truly needed most. But on the contrary, that was just a small part of it. Once Elena became a vampire, I would need the doppelganger even more than ever before. Instead of her blood creating new life in my hybrids, I would need her blood to continue to survive." There he had said it, a wave of relief succumbed him as he revealed the last remaining secret he had kept from Caroline. The relief was short lived when he finally got the nerve to look Caroline in the eyes. What he saw in her moved further past the fury that was in her earlier in the evening and had moved to a deep sadness.

"And you're telling me this NOW!" She couldn't believe he had waited this long to tell him something so huge and was on the verge of crying. "Why in the world would you keep something like this from me? Why would _all_ of you keep something like this from me?"

"Please don't fault your friends; they were only doing this upon my request. I didn't want you to know." He dropped his gaze to the floor, unsure of what her next reaction would be.

"But, why?" she looked at him and searched for any reasonable explanation. Did he not trust her? Did he think she would do something that would jeopardize his life, or Elena's, for that matter? After all the years they've known each other and the love he's shown her daily, why keep such a secret from her? Didn't she return that love enough to warrant the truth? As the last thought crossed her mind, she sighed and said, "You didn't tell me because you love me?" She didn't mean for it to be a question, of course she knew that he loved her, she just wanted an explanation as to why that would hold him back from telling her instead of encouraging him.

"I do, my dear Caroline, I never wanted this to ever be a burden on you," he confessed.

She was beginning to understand, if only a little bit, why he would go to all the trouble, but one thing still plagued her mind, "So why the theatrics and take it right from her jugular when she could easily give you blood bags to get the job done?"

"Typically that's exactly what we do, but with all the excitement of us leaving for Europe, I had forgotten I had run out. If it wasn't for Elena bringing it to my attention, I would've left without a supply."

"Why her neck?" she asked while trying to maintain her composure, "wouldn't the wrist have been just as good and a little less…intimate?"

"We both know that the quickest and most efficient source is the neck," he said coolly, "well that and of course the inner thigh," he said as an afterthought.

Caroline raised both her hands and shook her head, "Seriously! I did not need that image in my head."

Klaus pursed his lips and almost smiled before Caroline shot daggers at him with her gaze, he suppressed the smile and continued with his story, "I was in a hurry and her neck was the quickest way."

Caroline rolled her eyes one last time as the image of her love and best friend scrolled through her memory again, before coming to her next thought, "How often?"

"Beg your pardon?" he asked genteelly.

"How often do you need to drink her blood?" She thought about how many times she had seen Klaus with a glass of blood in his hands, and wondered how many times that blood had been Elena's?

"Once every three months, usually a gallon does it." Klaus suddenly became embarrassed and shifted away from her slightly and his eyes, once again, found the floor. He was uncomfortable talking about his weaknesses, he always had been, and with Caroline it was heightened. He was her protector and guardian and he loved her and always wanted to maintain this façade with her. "I never wanted you to think me weak," he confessed.

"Weak?" Caroline was startled by his vulnerability. "Klaus I could never think of you as weak, I love you. I'm disappointed that you didn't tell me, but I guess I'm beginning to understand why you didn't." She reached out and touched his hand with hers and closed the small gap that was between them. She rested her other hand on his face, forcing his eyes up to meet hers. "You are my number one priority in this crazy forever existence, and I hope you know that I would do anything to keep you safe, because I know you would do the same for me."

Her words touched him. He forgot sometimes that she was just as strong as she was beautiful. She'd only been alive for a moment compared to his lifetimes, but she already matched him with her intense instinct to protect what was hers. He intertwined their fingers and mirrored her action and caressed her face before lightly brushing his lips to hers. A small purr escaped from her as he pulled away and raised an eyebrow, "Now, will you please pack your things back up so we can get going?"

She didn't want to argue with him anymore, but knowing what she now knew it was hard for her to drop the subject completely. "Are you sure we should travel so far away from Elena," she asked. "I know you've got about three months worth coursing through your veins, but what if something happens and we can't get back in time for more?"

"We'll be back, I promise. And besides that, Bonnie found a lead for us in Ireland."

"A lead, what kind of lead?"

"The kind of lead that will gain me my freedom back."


End file.
